Announcing Admin Columns 7: A fresh new look and some exciting features

We’re thrilled to announce that the next major version of Admin Columns is nearly done. It delivers a modern UI, new features, and many improvements. We’ll be rolling it out over the next few weeks. And there is quite a lot to look forward to.

A Modern UI

We’ve redesigned the interface to be cleaner, more intuitive, and aligned with modern WordPress standards. Our goal was to make your workflow faster and easier, whether you’re setting up columns for the first time or managing complex configurations.

Although the current UI has served our users well and continues to receive good feedback, it was starting to feel a little dated. With this release, we’ve given the interface a fresh, modern look with more breathing room and a cleaner design.

There are a few key changes in navigation as well. Most notably, we replaced the drop-down to select a screen with a side menu and added the option to store favorites as well, located at the top left for easy access.

Wondering how Admin Columns looks today compared to the new version? Here’s a side-by-side of the current and redesigned main screen. The other screens have received a similar update.

Global Conditional Formatting

Conditional formatting lets you highlight rows in your list screens based on rules you define. For example, coloring overdue invoices in red or marking high-value customers in green. It’s a simple but powerful way to make important data stand out at a glance.

Many users have asked for rules that apply to everyone. It’s one of the features that will be available in the coming release. Users who have the right to manage columns can define rules that everyone will see by default. In line with table views and saved filters, this feature makes it easy to prepare tailored screens in advance, so users always see the information that matters most.

At the same time, flexibility remains. Users can also create their own rules, so they can tailor formatting to their personal workflow if they prefer. We’ve also expanded the color options, added a color-blind friendly mode for accessibility, and developers can still change these colors through the filters we offer.

Support for Rank Math SEO and SEO Press

While Yoast SEO remains the leading plugin in the WordPress ecosystem, it’s not the only popular option. Rank Math and SEO Press have also gained significant traction, with Rank Math in particular seeing rapid growth. Admin Columns now supports both of these plugins alongside Yoast SEO, giving you the same easy way to manage your SEO columns no matter which solution you use.

Templates

When your product, theme, or client project has a clear use case, starting from scratch with column sets can raise unnecessary questions or slow down onboarding. Templates solve this by letting themes and plugins ship with ready-made Admin Columns setups.

These sets provide immediate value out of the box: users get the right columns for their content type or workflow without needing to configure anything themselves. And of course, users can still adjust, extend, or replace the sets as needed. This also gives them a good idea of what is possible and how to use their overviews more easily and to be more productive with them.

This makes Admin Columns easier to adopt, ensures consistency across installs, and gives developers a straightforward way to deliver a better first-run experience.

Nested Filters – 7.1

Filters are at the core of Admin Columns. They let you quickly focus on the information you need while hiding everything else. Currently, filters work with basic “AND” conditions, applying every rule at once. This is already quite powerful, but there are scenarios where “OR” conditions, or even a combination of both, are needed. Nested filtering is the feature that will deliver exactly that.

This feature won’t be released immediately, but it will not be far behind the initial 7.0 release. We already have a working prototype and can even share a preview of how the UI will probably look and work. Before rolling it out, however, we want to refine it a bit further to ensure it delivers the performance and reliability you’ve come to expect from Admin Columns.

Custom Collections – 7.2

Admin Columns focuses on making WordPress list screens more powerful. But what about information stored in database tables that don’t have a screen of their own? That’s where Custom Collections come in.

With this first release, you’ll be able to take any database table and turn it into a fully functional list screen. Admin Columns will generate the screen for you, and you can define columns based on the table’s fields. From there, all the familiar tools are available: sorting, filtering, conditional formatting, exporting, and, for some fields, even inline editing.

We’re eager to see how developers put this into practice and look forward to your feedback as we continue to refine and expand the feature.

Backward Compatibility

Over the years, we’ve added dozens of features that help you customize, search, and organize your overview screens. We’ve always prioritized backward compatibility, but this release is a little different. We’re modernizing Admin Columns to deliver improvements today, on the near horizon, and well into the future.

As a result, some custom code you may have written over the years could stop working (gracefully). Should that happen, our support team will be ready to help out. Also, we’ll provide a clear upgrade path along with thorough documentation to help you out.

Wrapping Up

We’ve made big changes under the hood and sprinkled in lots of small touches that make Admin Columns feel better than ever. When 7.0 ships, we’ll share the full list, but here’s a taste of some other tweaks coming up: grouped ACF fields so you can give fields the same name without confusion, compound and modal columns that aggregate useful details without cluttering your tables, the ability to mark column sets as active or inactive to keep things tidy, plus countless subtle UI and UX tweaks that add up to a smoother experience all around.

A release candidate will be available to customers within the next few weeks, with the final release expected to follow shortly after.

We can’t wait for you to try the new version of Admin Columns. As always, we’d love to hear your feedback!